Occasionally, when I’m in the neighbourhood, I head to North York Central Library by Mel Lastman Square. Here in “Downtown North York,” as the square’s namesake mayor used to call the area, there is a massive library fitting for such a designation. I like to find a window seat on the sixth floor overlooking the square where I can pretend it’s my own prime office real estate.
I know to get there before 3 p.m. if I want a seat because most of them will be gone, filled by hundreds of students after that. The library has a rush hour. It’s chatty, more like a high school cafeteria than a library, with some teens working and others socializing. Libraries aren’t as hushed as they once were, and a bit of din doesn’t hamper my productivity.
The library is an ongoing success story, even with decades of people saying the internet makes libraries irrelevant, but it’s a success born out of necessity.
There aren’t very many places to hang out in Toronto, especially where you don’t have to pay for something. Toronto libraries, especially the big ones, become a place for students, old enough to be out and about on their own, to hang out.
Called “third spaces” by urban planners — not work and not home, but for recreation and other activities — they include libraries, parks, community centres but also places where you have to spend some money such as cafes, bars, gyms and clubs.
I’ve long been fortunate to be able to work from home, but cabin fever usually sets in and I roam the city looking for places to sit and work. Like a productive office, having people around but not bothering me is pleasant, doesn’t feel as lonely and being in the real world among other humans is an antidote to doom scrolling. I sometimes play library roulette, picking a different one to work in, but I also look for other places.
Called “third spaces” by urban planners they include libraries like North York Central, parks, community centres but also places where you have to spend some money such as cafes, bars, gyms and clubs.
Opening a laptop at a cafe is an urban worker cliché, but it’s not as easy as it might sound. The pandemic saw a number of places close. Once ubiquitous Starbucks, where the joke was how one was visible to the next, have been closing some of their traditional sit-down venues across Toronto and other cities and opening new outlets with no seating or washrooms. I’ve found existing cafes are often at capacity with no seating, especially in more suburban areas with fewer options, so I keep roaming.
Some cafes have no laptop policies, which is understandable considering people may nurse a coffee far longer than is reasonable and eat away at their meagre profits. I try to “pay rent” on my seat and purchase a few things regularly, but I’m always looking for even more casual places to just be. Sometimes I find in between places like building lobbies and stools at grocery stores.
Food courts have proven useful, and Toronto has dozens, maybe hundreds, from downtown to the suburbs. They often have free Wi-Fi and less pressure to constantly purchase something. The PATH tunnels in the financial district are like a grand tour of food courts. Dress to impress and slide into a seat where it’s possible to linger longer. As there are usually multiple outlets serving the area, the seats don’t belong to just one business and it’s possible to disappear into the busyness and be anonymous in the crowd: you’re just another worker down from the towers.
Food courts aren’t glamorous — though the trend of “Food Hall” has elevated some, at least in name — so I call them my low rent “We Work” co-working spaces and play food court roulette, too. The ones in malls are good, and I especially like sitting in Yorkville Village, watching the fancy dogs and their sometimes-curious owners walk through, each a tiny distraction from work.
Older folks and other groups have long known that mall food courts are good places to hang out. They, like teenagers, can feel left out of society, belonging nowhere, and why city efforts to create and maintain community spaces are so important.
There’s a redevelopment trend happening at malls across Canada, filling in parking lots with residential and commercial development, turning them into more urban, downtown-like places, with indoor and outdoor shops and amenities. Around Toronto, Bayview Village is currently being redeveloped in this fashion and there are big plans for megamalls like Yorkdale and Square One in Mississauga.
It will be interesting to see how the hang out spaces here evolve, especially as the classic old school food courts move toward higher-end food halls. At Square One, a new YMCA will be part of the redevelopment, a true third space, and as they’ve become de facto town centres, municipalities should encourage more of this kind of thing.
Everybody needs some place to hang out in the city and it’s what makes living in one great.
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